Researching New Zealand Rock n Roll - Tommy Adderley

The death of Kiwi rock n roll pioneer Tommy Adderley in 1993 begged an indepth look at his life in New Zealand, and despite Warwick Roger having made a snide dig about the dead Adderley's past drug habits in Metro I asked if I could write an obituary. After some thought it was okayed. I was surprised no-one else had thought to do it. Ever since John Dix's book I'd been waiting for the rock culture stories to flow but very few had.

I decamped for the public library and found the trail cold. As Tommy had begun his New Zealand musical life in Wellington I asked if I could go down there. They put me up in a fancy hotel above the Terrace which I never could relax in. I was soon out and about. First stop was the Alexander Turnbull Library which provided yet more bits and pieces, but no clear timeline, so I got on the phone to Tony Eagleton, a Wellington rocker of the 1950s and 1960s, whose later day fame came from inventing the Cadbury's Cookie Monster.

We met up in a bar off Manners Street frequented by the city's large contingent of aging rockers. Tony proved more interested in talking about himself than Tommy and I was slowly getting pissed off when a bearded guy across the bar motioned me over. It was Billy Brown, a jazz drummer, who knew Tommy well. He gave me a name to look up in Auckland when I got back. Then it was up into the hills above the city to see rock historian Roger Watkins. Roger was a bit weary and gave me little but he did play me Tommy's shock 1960s American and Canadian hit, I Just Can't Understand. Watkins seemed more intent on pumping me about John Baker's progress in researching New Zealand's 1960s rockers as I'd profiled John as a young up and comer.

Back in Auckland I pursued David Gapes, one of the founders of Radio Hauraki, and more recently editor of OnFilm. Gapes was a close friend of Tommy's and he was reluctant to talk. He finally answered my sixth call and immediately took me to task for the dig at Tommy we'd run. I sighed and told him that wasn't me. I felt like a kid caught in the crossfire between warring adults. Gapes then softened and answered my questions. When the story was published he rang up and thanked me.

At this point the storyline still wasn’t clear with chunks of Adderley's eventful existence missing so I contacted John Dix, then editing music freebie Real Groove. We met in a pub on Queen Street, and I liked him immediately. He was open and friendly and a little surprised that I didn't want a drink. It was still morning, I told him, although the truth was I never drank in work time.

John was free with his knowledge and anecdotes, and refreshed, I lined up interviews with recently returned sixties pop star Larry Morris of Larry's Rebels, and Billy Kristian, a Maori bass player, who'd had success with Ray Columbus and The Invaders, Max Merritt, and a group called Night.

The first time I see Larry Morris he's standing in the godly view of his ridge-top Orakei house in the hard white sun of early winter in blue jeans and trainers, framed by the sea lanes he sailed as a merchant seaman, looking out past Waiheke Island where his parents now live.

Larry Morris (Sturdy) was a hard nut who'd gone to sea in his teens and helmed New Zealand’s toughest pop band of the mid to late sixties, and this was the perfect tableau for another fine performance. Larry Morris working the press to the symbolic backdrop of the city that loved him most to the theme of the lost fallen sixties pop star returns.

It’s only when the conversation turns a dark corner to Tommy Adderley and the package tours Larry and he were regulars on that I remember he’s also back in the city that jailed him then turned its back on him in puritan disgust, consigning him to the dead grey world of faded stardom.

Adderley died shortly before Morris’s return to Auckland, and it’s obvious Tommy’s death has given him pause. He cried several times, left the room once when overcome with grief, and seemed wounded that no-one had thought to notify him about Adderley’s death sooner. He had just missed the funeral, but made the belated wake-like Easter Weekend celebration which brought together much of our deposed 1960s pop aristocracy.

They were fellow travelers, those two. When Nicola Legat interviewed Adderley on his release from prison for drug offenses in the early 1980s, Larry Morris was there riding shotgun. Still is, it seems. He tells me to ignore all the drug shit about Adderley. “I’m not gonna tell you anything about that.” It sounds like an over-reaction. But maybe he has a right to be tetchy. He’s been stung hard by drugs convictions. His first in March 1973, wiping out his career. His second later that year, landing him in jail for seven years for selling LSD to an undercover policeman.

I'd already rumbled him smoking pot with Alan Beagle, an old time Auckland DJ, and laughed when he threw open the windows and made a weak excuse.

Billy Kristian proved a much more difficult nut to crack. He'd reluctantly agreed to talk but when I turned up at his Kingsland studio left me there with his scrapbooks and disappeared.

With the rock and pop Adderley covered I turned to the jazz and cabaret Tommy hitting up for comment all-round performer Chic Littlewood, and Jack Friedlander, the old time jazz pianist Billy Brown had hipped me to. Littlewood was lightweight but Friedlander was a real gem. He was a former racing journalist who'd played jazz since the 1940s initially in his father's Christchurch group. Most recently he'd backed Tommy at jazz festivals around the North Island. He asked for money and when I refused smiled and lead me into a room crammed with sheet music. He'd started pulling books out when we were interrupted by a seedy looking visitor in a grubby check jacket.

The visitor handed Jack some money and they disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes before the visitor left. Jack didn't miss a beat. He moved back into the lounge and sat down at his piano and started pumping out Duke Ellington's A Train. I had to leave but I was walking up his steep drive I could hear him still playing. The jazz had taken him.

With the story near complete I just had Adderley's partner, Margaret, and his former wife, Pam, to interview. Pam, his ex, and the mother of his son, had been with him during his early junk years, and was now a real estate agent on the North Shore. She seemed more interested in damage control. His current partner Margaret was a nurse who'd been with Adderley right up to his death from internal bleeding. I caught up with her at their art deco flat across the road from the Gables Tavern on Jervois Road where Tommy was singing on the day he died. She was surprisingly candid, and still clearly in love with Adderley.